Amid ‘COVID fatigue,’ Lenny Curry pleads with Jacksonville to mask up
Lenny Curry wants people to wear masks. But he can't make them do it.

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Jacksonville has a mask order, but adherence is not enforced.

With America’s virulent relationship with COVID-19 entering its sixth month, leaders in many cities, including Jacksonville, are struggling to get people to take precautions.

Mayor Lenny Curry called a noon press conference Tuesday to “encourage” locals to wear masks, despite “COVID fatigue” that some may be experiencing.

The encouragement comes roughly six weeks after Curry issued a mask mandate, an aspirational directive with no apparent enforcement component.

Curry, who issued the mandate in absentia (he was on vacation that week), only issued the order after weeks of spiking positive tests, amid an ultimately fruitless bid to mitigate the virus in time to facilitate a full-occupancy Republican National Convention.

Now the convention isn’t coming, full occupancy or otherwise, with city leaders relieved because the logistics of the event proved daunting.

But with positive testing rates still closer to 10% than zero, and with 12 new deaths from the disease pushing the official toll to 210, the Mayor addressed the ongoing crisis, which saw 231 new cases and an 8.5% positive testing rate reported Wednesday morning for the previous 24 hours from the Florida Department of Health.

No end is in sight, Curry warned.

“The coronavirus has been spreading … it will spread as long as we don’t have a vaccine,” Curry said, before expressing condolences about coronavirus casualties.

“One death is tragic. It’s an individual, it’s a life, it affects family members. The reality is the virus is with us,” he added.

The call to “shut the city down,” Curry said, is “not an acceptable response,” while mask wearing is a “simple, easy, and effective way” to mitigate the virus.

Curry, who has said to “learn to live with the virus,” introduced a video Wednesday that showcased hospital executives’ testimonials on the need to mask up.

“The number of cases continues to trend in the right direction,” Curry said. “The rate of new cases and severity is not what it was, but we must not become complacent.”

Indeed, complacency clearly is a major concern.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has written for FloridaPolitics.com since 2014. He is based in Northeast Florida. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


2 comments

  • Sonja Fitch

    August 12, 2020 at 2:15 pm

    Are you faking or are you really humbling yourself looting Lenny ! It takes courage to lead! Make masks mandatory! New facts say social distance may need to be as much as 16 feet because the trumpvirus is an aerosol!

    • Ian MacKenzie

      August 12, 2020 at 4:29 pm

      Around the world the verdict is in–masks do NOTHING.

Comments are closed.


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